Yellow Perch

ARTICLES ABOUT YELLOW PERCH BY DATE - PAGE 2

Four thoughts about the meeting last week in Annapolis on new yellow perch fishing regulations, then I promise to let it go. 1.) Eight thousand pounds of fish. Were we really having a serious, adult conversation about 8,000 pounds of fish? That's what watermen reported catching this spring in their truncated season. The state estimates that no more than 40 watermen take part in the harvest. Forty into 8,000 is 200 pounds. What kind of a fishery is that? Of course, Baltimore County watermen Daniel F. Beck, Charles Norris and Harry Foote III were caught in 2005 for poaching 22,000 pounds of yellow perch off Aberdeen Proving Ground.

It might not be fair, but the Maryland Fisheries Service has got to get it absolutely right this time when it offers up its new plan to manage yellow perch. One hundred percent. No doubt about it. Nailed. So much is riding on it, beginning with the service's credibility with recreational anglers, who saw their license fees double last year, and state lawmakers, who are watching the process. At a meeting tomorrow night in Annapolis, officials will ask anglers what they want to see in new regulations.

Social networking in the outdoors usually starts with borrowing bug spray or scrounging coffee from someone with a thermos or getting a jump start for a dead-as-a-doornail battery. Sometimes, it's interactive: telling the person who's snoring to shut up or being told yourself. Denny Reid, a hunter and farmer from Dorchester County, and his friends figured there had to be a better way. Borrowing from sites such as MySpace and Facebook, Reid and Co. launched CamoSpace.com last August to give hunters and anglers a free place to swap photos, videos, tips and tall tales (Hey, it wouldn't be social networking without some fibbing)

You really can't go wrong this month if you say, "I'll have the fish, please." Out on the water, stripers and blues are schooling up for their annual fall dance. On terra firma, the calendar is filling with the dates of meetings and hearings to talk about finned critters. With time running out, the Department of Natural Resources is moving quickly to draft a yellow perch management plan that would take effect Jan. 1. A group of stakeholders met Aug. 22 to review proposals that would help yellow perch migrate up rivers and streams to their historical spawning areas and provide a formula for divvying up the harvest between recreational and commercial fishermen.

The legislative session that ended at the stroke of midnight Monday didn't turn outdoors lovers into pumpkins. Instead, for the first time in several years, things largely went their way. But not without casualties. After watching more than four years of inept top-level management at the Department of Natural Resources, lawmakers imposed their sense of order on three popular issues: terrapins, yellow perch and fisheries policy. Also shaken by the scruff, the leaders of the Maryland Saltwater Sportfishermen's Association and Coastal Conservation Association Maryland, by suspicious members who wonder if they were misled on a bill that raised the cost of fishing licenses.

When it comes to consumer confidence in the Department of Natural Resources, Senate Bill 702 shows how far the agency has fallen. The Coastal Conservation Association Maryland is pushing legislation that would ban commercial yellow perch fishing in Chesapeake Bay tributaries from Jan. 1 to March 20 to protect spawning fish. Leadership of the group says after waiting eight years for DNR to do something to protect yellow perch, it had to take the lead. Ken Lewis, chairman of CCA's Government Relations Committee, acknowledges that it would rather let DNR do its job. "When it doesn't, we have no alternative but to turn to our elected representatives in the legislature," he says.

Piney Run -- While most pan fish are coming on late this spring, it is a banner year for yellow perch, say Jim Gronaw and Loren Lustig at the park office. Yellow perch ranging from 11 to 13 inches are being caught on worms off the lake's beaver lodges. Largemouth bass in the 2- to 4-pound range are taking soft plastics like Senko worms and Sluggos during early morning and dusk; a sure bet is along the north and south shorelines approaching the Wildlife Management cove. Channel catfish, some more than 11 pounds, are taking chicken liver and nightcrawlers.

The current and former presidents of the Baltimore County Watermen's Association and a third commercial fisherman have pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of poaching off Aberdeen Proving Ground. Charles "Sonny" Norris, Daniel F. Beck and Harry Foote III were arrested March 1, 2005, by officers of the Army installation's Marine, Wildlife and Environmental Law Enforcement Division, who pulled up about 85 nets filled with more than 22,000 pounds of yellow perch, a fish protected under Maryland law. State law prohibits commercial yellow perch fishing in February, the fish's spawning month.

Big fish? We got 'em this spring in a big way. Already the state freshwater yellow perch record has tumbled and it looks like a Broadneck Peninsula native may have hauled in a world-record blueline tilefish. Patrick Hirsch, who grew up fishing and crabbing on the Magothy River, went to sea last Sunday with another son of Anne Arundel County, Capt. Jim Brincefield. There, 60 miles offshore, Hirsch caught a 15-pound, 4-ounce tilefish. The current all-tackle record is 15 pounds even. "I just happened to be a lucky person that day," says Hirsch, 43, a software developer at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.

The Ehrlich administration is dropping its proposal to end a 17-year moratorium on the commercial fishing of yellow perch in two Eastern Shore rivers. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources had proposed opening the Choptank and Nanticoke to commercial yellow perch fishing this spring. But after an outcry from environmentalists and recreational anglers, who said the measure would further imperil a scarce resource, department officials changed their minds. "We are withdrawing that entire package," said DNR assistant secretary Mike Slattery.